


Friendly Compromises

by tatooedlaura



Series: Life [12]
Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-31 00:33:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8555668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooedlaura/pseuds/tatooedlaura
Summary: Sometimes, you just have to compromise ...





	

It was a draining case. Not as horrific as the previous one, with the headless corpses and the corpse-less heads but still terrible in its own right: victim abduction-victim rape-five minutes of sheer terror in the end with guns out in blinding fear followed by five hours of fruitless interrogation and finally, a confession that made the hairs on the back of Scully’s neck stand on end.

“Mulder?” When he didn’t respond, she tried again, “Mulder?”

Instead of a typical, ‘yeah?’ he came back with a hauntingly quiet, “sometimes I wonder what keeps me from killing these people? I wonder why I don’t just say ‘fuck it’ to my livelihood and beat the living hell out of these soulless nightmares of human beings, to be generous in their classification. Why do I not just snap and make them suffer? Instead I follow rules and get confessions and arrest them and pay taxes so their sorry asses get to live in this world and do their time and get free and do all that shit again. Why do I do this damn job in the first place? I know how it all ends. I know exactly how the cycle goes yet I just keep doing it. Over and over.” With a deep, vibrating breath, “we need a damn vacation.”

He’d drifted through these thoughts before but for some reason, tonight’s version set her stomach to tightening, her nerves frayed enough from the last five days that she couldn’t quite convince herself that he was okay under his angst. Ignoring her aches and pains, she felt in the pockets of her coat, coming up with the only thing she could offer in their darkened car with still an hour drive to home. Holding out an M&M from her secret pocket stash, “I’m sorry.”

Mulder looked, then did a double take before taking the candy, “if it’d been red, it could have been love.”

The next one she handed him was orange, “sorry. There aren’t any in the bag.”

“Story of my life, Scully. Story of my life.”

&&&&&&&&&&&&

Once they were back at his place, Mulder disappeared to his bedroom, emerging a minute later already wrapped in pajamas pants and a thermal. Tossing a set of clothes at her, “here. Meet me on the couch in five minutes. I’m ordering a deep-dish and you can’t stop me.”

“Salad, too, please.”

“Gotcha.”

Full of excellent O’Reilly pizza a half-hour later, Mulder went to toss the trash but after a minute, he didn’t return to the couch, sending Scully in search of him. She found him contemplating the large map they’d marked all to hell the week before, “did you put on the latest place?”

Pointing with his pen, “yeah.”

When his conversation stopped there, she scooted up beside him, “are you okay?”

“Not really.”

Trailing her hand down his arm and teasing his thumb between her fingers, “I’m sorry I didn’t have any red M&Ms in the bag. I usually eat them all first because they’re my favorite.”

“I’ll bet I can order you a whole bag of them from whoever the hell makes them.”

Moving to simply grip his thumb, “I’ll share ‘em with you.”

This finally elicited some kind of facial expression other than borderline depression, “thanks.” Looking down at her, “I see our options right now as two very distinct choices. Would you like to hear them?”

“Of course. Lay ‘em on me.”

“We can either go to sleep or stay awake?”

Wrinkling her nose, Scully wondered where this could possibly be heading because it was too simple, too black and white and too totally not her partner at all, “is there a door number three?”

“Drunken Scrabble and melancholy soul torment.”

“Please tell me there’s a fourth door, then. Pretty please?”

“Three’s all you get.”

Scully moved her hand from his thumb to wrap her arms around his waist from the side, “I would like part of three intermingled with section two followed by part one, if that suits you?”

“You had to say the word ‘suit’, didn’t you? Had to bring work back up. Thanks.”

She squeezed him as tightly as her tired bones would allow, “sorry, partner. You look good in a suit though, so that’s saying something.”

With a guffaw bordering on chuckle, he patted her arm, “it’s probably too late for liquor though, isn’t it?”

“It’s a Saturday night. We don’t have to be anywhere until Sunday dinner.”

“Bring it on.”

&&&&&&&&&&&&

First order of business, find a Scrabble board … and tiles … and a pad of paper.

The board itself turned out to be the most difficult to hunt down. Scully couldn’t help asking more than once why he had the tiles sitting innocently on his bookshelf but the board was nowhere to be found.

“Why you gotta ask me these hard questions, partner? Just accept that I keep them in two different places.”

“But you’ve forgotten one of those places.”

“I’m questioning more why, when you’ve been through my bookshelf numerous times, that you haven’t once asked me why I had the bag of tiles without the board? Hmmm? Got an answer for that one?”

“I think I like melancholy Mulder better right now.”

Giving her a semi-playful smile, “we can return to him at any point in the evening. He’s hovering just below the surface.”

“I’ll draw the board myself first, if I have to.”

Soon, they unearthed it, innocently folded up and being used as a shelf for jeans in his closet, the flat surface held up with stacks of old textbooks, “ahh-ha. I forgot about that.”

Looking at the poor man’s shelf he’d build, “you realize you actually earn a paycheck now, correct? You could just buy a metal shelf. $15 at the hardware store.”

“Well, if we’re going to keep using the board, I will but if this is a one-time thing, perfectly good shelf right there.”

“Just go find me some liquor, would you?” Once she’d cleared the coffee table and set up the board, she called out to Mulder, “ready when you are.”

Appearing in the door almost instantly, looking sheepish, “um, so, what would you say if I told you the closest thing I have to proper libations is a fermented bottle of white grape juice that is decidedly not white anymore?”

Scully rubbed her hands together devilishly, “then we stay sober and I kick your ass in the best game ever invented for geeks like me.”

As he settled on the floor beside her, “how about a friendly compromise of no scientific jargon from you and no psycho-babble from me? Straight up, normal people words.”

Counting out her seven tiles, “but our straight up, normal people words are scientific jargon and psycho-babble.”

“Well, then, I guess we play to the death, genius vs. genius, liberal arts vs. science, Scully vs. Mulder in the battle of the century.”

“You’re on, Spooky.”

“Eat my dust, G-Woman.”

The first word that landed on the board was ‘cat’.


End file.
